A mind game with a lot of mass touch

Sairam Shankar, who made his debut in his brother Puri Jagannath’s direction failed to make a mark. He tried his hand in another couple of movies but none of them could give him a break. In order to promote him again, Puri Jagannath went a step ahead and decided to produce a film again with Sairam as hero. Puri prepared a story and dialogues for the movie and made his protégé Jaya Ravindra wield the megaphone this time. His trick worked well, as a debutant director would work with commitment to bag a hit and Sairam too did his best and used his complete energy in this mass-oriented movie.

Story:

Sai (Sairam Shankar) is the son of a lower middle-class parents Rao (Chandramohan) and Ramanamma (Kovai Sarala). He also has a sister younger to him. Once a girl called Aiswarya (Bindu Madhavi), daughter of Surya Prakash (Sayaji Shinde), a big real estate businessman, mistakes some one who teased her with Sai and sends goons to break his leg. Later, Sai loses his heart to Aiswarya, but the latter did not even care him. Again on another occasion, Sai thrashes a person, who teased her, right in front of her and this makes her to fall in love with him. Surya Prakash, who is very narrow-minded accidentally watches Aiswarya moving with Sai on a motorbike and in a fit of anger roughs up Rao and Sai. But Aiswarya reaches the spot soon and threatens to shoot herself if he did not stop thrashing them and declares she loves him.

As, she declared her love open, Surya Prakash challenges Sai and gives him an offer to earn at least five per cent value of his assets and then ask for Aiswarya’s hand. Sai refuses the offer saying he doesn’t need to earn money overnight for his love. Instead, he gives him another bumper offer that he would make him pauper and pull him on to the roads and make Surya Prakash equal to them and then marry Aiswarya. An advocate, MS Narayana (MS Narayana), stands behind Sai and advises him to first learn what are his assets and how he acquired all of them. So that they could find loopholes and get them confiscated. As per a plan, Sai plays a trick and robs the entire gold and black money with Surya Prakash by sending Income Tax personnel. Later, he grabs a land belonging to a big goon called Mallikarjun (Supreet) and erect a board in the name of Suryaprakash and lit fire between both of them resulting in losing some prime land. Sai also befriends with the home minister. Sai uses his brain to backstab Surya Prakash by luring him to grab Begumpet Airport land with the help of home minister through his Surya Prakash’s financial adviser by paying Rs 300 crore to the Home Minister.

But the money did not reach the minister. By the time Surya Prakash realises the damage occurs as the home minister feigning ignorance and chide Surya Prakash as to who was he to sell Begumpet airport land to him. At this juncture, Surya Prakash tries to take the help of Mallikarjun to teach a lesson to Sai and the latter agrees to get back all the wealth of Surya Prakash on a condition that he should marry Aiswarya with him. Sai again uses his intelligence and sends Mallikarjun behind bars. As a last step, Sai spreads a rumour that Aiswarya Bank run by Surya Prakash is running bankrupt and sends him to jail. Soon, Mallikarjun releases on bail and wants to eliminate Sai but fails in his attempt. In the climax, Surya Prakash realises his folly and accepts Sai as his son-in-law.

PLUS:

The story chosen for the film this time is not completely novel, but Puri Jagannath infused mind game for the movement of the film and made it very interesting. Debutant director Jaya Ravindra too is shrewd and maintained good relief through comedy, songs and action scenes in perfect time intervals. Sairam Shankar too kept his complete effort to make the film appear very energetic. He showed lot of ease in dances and action scenes. However, he still need to improve his dialogue modulation, which proved a set back for his career. But, as the film has a mass appeal, his yelling suited his character well. Bindu Madhavi, who appear in a traditional way in ‘Avakai Biryani’ of Sekhar Kammula, played a romantic heroine in this film and filled her character with a lot of glamour. She did not feel shy to sport revealing costumes and gave a sexy look to the audiences. The dialogues penned for her too were full of mass appeal. Lastly, the biggest highlight of the film is the music by Raghu Kunche. This debutant music director filled all the songs with mass tunes and the album remained to be a chartbuster for the past many weeks since the release of the audio. However, he still need to improvise himself in re-recording techniques.

MINUS:

Though the film has a lot of mass appeal, it has a little does of sentiment. However, none of the sentiment scenes are appealing. As a result, the film may not go well with city audiences. In the name of mind games, the story writer and director filled the film with drama, but they were too cinematic. A big real estate businessman, getting lured for Begumpet airport, appear to be very bad. Likewise, Kovai Sarala lost her charm and she did not fit into the character properly. Dialogues too had lot of mass orientation and there is no smoothness in any given point of time. Robbing of Rs 300 crore is hypothetical and keeping in a mechanic shed is further cinematic. But for these minor lapses, the film is okay with lot of mass appeal.

REMARKS:

No doubt, Sairam Shankar did his best for the film. But the film was released in a wrong time as it had to face another big hero like Nandamuri Kalyanaram who is coming up with ‘Jayeebhava’ which is also his own production. The commercial success of the film depends on the success of the film which was released on the same day. Moreover, the film had to face another competition through Puri Jagannath’s another film ‘Ek Niranjan’. With no stars in the film, the openings appear to be a little poor and one had to wait and watch the outcome of ‘Jayeebhava’ to judge the commercial success of this movie. However, the film may go well with ‘B’ and ‘C’ centres due to its mass appeal.

Cast: Sairam Shankar, Bindu Madhavi, Sayaji Shinde, Brahmanandam, Dharmavarapu Subrahmanyam, Chandramohan, Jayaprakash Reddy, Supreet, MS Narayana, Ali, Venumadhav, Qayyum, Sravan, Anand, Vamsee, Chinna, Kovai Sarala, Raksha, Kiranmayi, Chaitanya, Master Bharat, Taslima Sheik and others.

Credits: Camera – Sai Sriram, Art – Chinna, Editing – MR Varma, Music– Raghu Kunche Lyrics – Bhaskarabhatla, Action – Ram-Laxman, Story, dialogues and production – Puri Jagannath, Screenplay and direction – Jaya Ravindra.

Banner: Vaishno Academy